Method and limits

This site is a mechanical filter, not an analysis. Here is exactly what it does and does not do.

Where the text comes from

Every quotation is taken from the Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC) of the product, as published on the electronic Medicines Compendium (emc) at medicines.org.uk, which carries the UK regulatory label. The link at the bottom of each product page goes to that document. Where the emc page shows a "last updated" date, that date is shown here.

How a briefing is built

1. The manufacturer's full Summary of Product Characteristics is read, section by section, for that one product.
2. Every statement worth knowing is written out as a single line, and tagged with the section number it comes from - composition, posology, contraindications, warnings, interactions, pregnancy, undesirable effects, pharmacology, excipients, storage.
3. Those lines are grouped under five headings: ingredients and materials, manufacture and storage, safety findings, evidence and claims, and what the document itself concedes.
4. Nothing is added from any other source: no other product, no news, no study that is not in the document, and no opinion about whether anything is good or bad.

A product page also carries two supporting layers, both built mechanically from the same document:

• The verbatim ingredient lists - section 2 and section 6.1, word for word, with a plain-English note on what each thing is.
• The audit trail - every sentence in the document that contains one of the phrases below, in the document's own words, so you can check the briefing against the raw material and see that nothing was left out.

The phrase lists used for the audit trail

These do not select what goes in the briefing. They only decide which sentences are copied into the audit trail, matched as whole words.

What is theirs and what is ours

The three layers are kept visually separate, and it matters which is which.

• Theirs - the quotes. Set in a serif, in quotation marks, with the section number and a link. Reproduced word for word. Never paraphrased, never scored.
• Theirs, summarised - the briefing. Our sentences, but each one is a summary of a statement in that document and carries its section number. If a line cannot be traced to a section of the label, it is a fault.
• Ours - the plain English. The "In plain English" notes and the Plain English page. Definitions of a word or an ingredient. Never a judgement: no line says an ingredient or product is safe, unsafe, risky or harmless, and none says an event was caused by a vaccine.

What this site does not do

• It does not say any vaccine is unsafe. A sentence appearing here says nothing about whether an event is common, or whether it is caused by the product.
• It does not rank, score, rate or compare products.
• It does not use any source other than the manufacturer's own regulatory label for the quotations. The plain-English definitions are ours.
• It does not tell you what to do. That is a conversation with a clinician.

Real limits of this method

• Phrase matching is blunt. A sentence about a disease could match a trigger for an unrelated reason, and a serious statement worded without any listed phrase will be missed.
• Serious does not mean common. A "very rare" event in a label may have been reported once, in millions of doses, with no established cause.
• Absence is not evidence. The phrase "no data" often means a formal study was never run for a group outside the licensed population. It is not proof of harm.
• Fragment filtering is crude too. A short but important statement without a trigger phrase, or one removed as a table fragment, will not appear here.
• Only the quote is authoritative. Always read the sentence in its section, at the source.

Corrections

If a quotation here does not match the source document, it is a fault and should be treated as one. Regenerated from the source documents.